Not All Scars Heal
by AndSoIWrite
Summary: Sam's wondering why Dean's been racking up injuries like trophies, why Dean refuses to even look at him anymore. But then again, Sam also thinks his secret is still a secret. Pre-series.


**A/N**: This has just been sitting in my head all day so I thought I'd get it down and let you guys check it out. I don't usually (ever) do oneshots so it would be awesome if you could let me know if y'all like it or not!

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Sam has never seen Dean like this. Sure, he's seen Dean angry and pissed-off, searching out the same kind of vengeance their father lives for. He's seen Dean stubborn and determined, going after creatures that he has no hopes of catching. He's born witness to the late night awakenings and the adrenaline rushes that surge through his brother like electricity, to the thrill of Dean's smile as he cracks open another beer, to the blood dripping from his brother's skin only to be washed away by the pride of a job well done.

But Sam has never seen this side of Dean. This suicidal, throat-slashing, practically barbaric _machine _that wears Dean's clothes and sleeps in the bed beside Sam, that still murmurs in his sleep like Dean, still sounds like Dean.

But isn't Dean.

Right now Dean-but-not-Dean is passed out on the motel bed while Sam is sitting in the chair across the room, staring at the thing that used to be his brother. It's actually easier to look at him while he's asleep because none of that wild, aggressive hunger is evident. Instead, at almost age twenty-two, Dean Winchester looks like a child, especially when he rolls over to his side and tucks one hand under his head, nestling his face in the crook of his elbow. One of his brother's legs is thrown on top of the scratchy motel duvet and in the shadows of the moonlight, Sam can just make out the jagged gash that had ripped Dean's leg open from ankle to knee. That one had been a ghoul.

Two months ago, the three Winchesters happened upon a town where high school football stars had been found with their stomachs ripped out. Animal attacks, the local newspapers say, but the Hunters know better so they drive all night in the Impala only to reach the town by morning and another murder. The kills had happened on only one side of town so it wasn't particularly difficult to pinpoint a location on the creatures.

"I'll go in first," Dean says to Sam, just the beginning of that dangerous flame lighting his eyes. Sam half expects sparks to burst from his brother's mouth instead of words. "You follow behind me later and be my backup."

"Shouldn't we wait for Dad?" Teenage Sam is tall – taller now than his older brother – but he feels like shrinking under Dean's glare. His brother has never worn this look with him; this are-you-stupid-don't-ask-questions look that he must have perfected from John without Sam noticing. It's like Sam has two fathers now and neither are the forgiving type.

"You shouldn't go in alone," Sam dares to say and is rewarded with another scowl but this time he's ready for it. He puffs out his chest and meets those burning emerald eyes, the ones that want to set him on fire.

"Now you care," mutters Dean but it's more of a snarl and he just says, "stay put" before walking into the house, armed with a machete and the kindling of a kamikaze attitude. So Sam paces outside the house, throwing nervous glances over his shoulder even though the abandoned residence is in the middle of nowhere and they'd be lucky if anyone drove by in the time span of two days, let alone an hour.

The glass windows that aren't shattered rattle in their panes and even from his spot in the driveway, Sam hears a thud from inside. It's definitely time to go in. His hand wraps around the handle of his own freshly sharpened machete. The blade is the size of his arm but the hunter has no problems holding it; his Dad has only been training him since he was twelve and Sam's muscles – like his brother's – bulge appreciatively under his gray Henley.

By the time he reaches the front door, his jaw is clenched and he can't help but think of the day that's coming soon when he's walking out of this life. The acceptance packet from Stanford is tucked underneath the mattress of his bed at the motel, probably being eaten by cockroaches. Neither John nor Dean has any idea that it even exists; neither knew that he bothered to apply for college in the first place, probably because he never told them. Only Bobby knows and that was because Sam needed a mailing address.

A yell from inside the house focuses Sam on the present, on the blood pumping through his racing heart at the anticipation of what's inside. When he bursts into what he supposes was once a living room, his vision goes red as he sees Dean underneath the grip of one of the dead high school quarterbacks, his machete just inches from his splayed fingers, one of which looks broken. Sam curses loudly enough for the dead kid to turn toward him and then Sam is taking all that muscle, all those early morning runs and late night weight lifting sessions, and slicing through tendons, ligaments, and sinewy muscle until he hits the bone and then that too is fractured as Sam flexes.

The creature's body drops onto his brother but Dean rolls out from under it with just a gasp, keeping his eyes on the other door across the room. The machete is back in his hand within another thirty seconds and it's not until Dean stumbles against the wall, catching himself against the peeling rose-colored wallpaper that Sam notices the bottom half of one of Dean's legs is shaking violently. His jeans are drenched in blood and through the rip in his pants, Sam can see the gash, swears he sees bone.

"Hey, Dean! Easy there!" Sam says, reaching for his brother as he tries to move forward.

"Get off me." Even though his voice is breathy and weaker than before, it's the same snarl from earlier and Sam recoils, eyes narrowed.

"Your leg's busted pretty bad," he says, hoping this will make Dean feel the pain because right now his brother is moving along the perimeter of the room, using the wall as support, leaving behind bloody handprints like a breadcrumb trail.

"There's two more downstairs," Dean says. "Let's go."

"I'll get them," Sam says but of course Dean doesn't listen and almost falls down the flight of stairs to the basement. It's pitch dark but Sam can still hear. The harsh, wet-sounding breathing of his older brother beside him and then two sets of footsteps dancing closer from somewhere to his right.

"Let's go!" Dean roars suddenly and it's so unlike Dean's stealth style of hunting that it takes Sam a moment to realize the remaining ghouls accept the challenge and then it's all Sam can do to not accidentally decapitate his brother instead of the creatures but somehow, God knows how, ten minutes later only the Winchesters are standing. Well, Dean is slouched against the stair railing, the toe of his bad leg resting on the ground like a lame racehorse.

And even though the monsters are gone and the threat has disappeared, he still doesn't allow Sam to help him up the stairs. Hell, he doesn't allow Sam to even touch him, just instructs him to drive them back to the motel and Dean spends two hours laying in the bathtub, sewing up his own leg. Sam's more annoyed than anything, his teenage hormones not allowing him to be hurt by this weird standoffishness. Just annoyed.

Sitting in a different motel room two months later though, Sam has moved past annoyed. He's hurt, frustrated, disappointed. Mostly, he's confused. Sleeping Dean-but-not-Dean murmurs something in sleep, something that sounds like _Sammy_ but that can't be right because Dean doesn't say Sam's name anymore, let alone his childhood nickname. Then Dean huffs out a sigh and goes silent.

It's dark as Sam makes his way to the bathroom but he makes sure to close the door before he turns on the light, staring at his reflection. The fluorescent lighting is unforgiving, the shadows beneath Sam's eyes are deep and if he hadn't been hunting spirits his whole life he would have used the cliché he looks as pale as a ghost, but the seventeen-year-old doesn't care. What he cares about are the bloody dressing bandages that are in the bathroom trash. Dean's latest stint in the hospital was created out of some moronic grudge he is holding on his little brother, one that Sam can't even get him to confess to. Usually when Dean is mad, the whole world knows; the Impala vibrates with Metallica's angriest words and the motel rooms become decorated with beer cans. This is a new kind of angry to go with a new kind of Dean.

But it is more than just the silence and the brooding and the endless shifting of his gaze away from Sam. It's the way Dean has stopped caring, stopped worrying over his little brother and even though Sam doesn't need to be babied anymore, it's like the tilt of his world has been thrown off balance. He had grown so used to the give and take of Dean's mothering tendencies toward him, had taken them for granted, so that when they simply disappeared, Sam's response was to flail until he got the earth back under his feet.

"Take care of your brother," John had said to Sam two weeks ago, for maybe the first time in Sam's life. "Something's up with him."

"Do you know what?" John squints at his youngest but his troubled expression doesn't fade.

"No. I thought you might know."

"I have no idea," Sam says. "He's been acting crazy for weeks. Dad, I was in the house with the Crocotta. Dean deliberately didn't wait for me and went after it alone. That's how he ended up in the hospital." John stares at the boy a while longer, then flicks his gaze to stare at the sky and shrugs.

"If something's bothering him, it will come out sooner or later."

"Yeah, he's going to explode," Sam says but then Dean walks out of his hospital room, dressed in normal clothes once more. The green eyes that Sam grew up with are dulled by pain medication but Dean's not so out of it that he talks to Sam and everything goes back to the way it's been for the last six weeks.

But Sam can't stop remembering the moments in the rundown warehouse, the ones where they had snuck up on the Crocotta, prepared to go in on it together, knowing it could trick them by using the other one's voice to lure them into a trap. John had gone in through the back entrance to take the first floor, leaving Dean and Sam to climb the fire escape to the second.

"Ready?" is the only thing Deans says.

"Let's go," Sam says back and then the two of them are creeping through a broken window and hitting the floor with quiet feet. The trick is to keep each other in sight but Dean's moving quickly around all the broken junk that's littering the warehouse floor and he wants to call out to his brother but can't risk letting the Corcotta know their position. Except the Corcotta already knows where they are because something heavy strikes Sam in between the shoulder blades and he falls forward, panicking when he can't get up.

"Dean!" he calls as his vision comes back into focus. Something solid is pinning him to the ground and Dean is standing just a few feet away and Sam sees the last flurry of movement as the Corcotta disappears out the door. "Dean, get me out," Sam says, struggling to lift what appears to be a metal bookcase or something off his back. He's strong but the angle is off and he can't quite get enough leverage. Something of a shadow passes over Dean's face and he seems to draw into himself, the fingers not holding a weapon curling into a fist as if Dean is holding himself back.

And Sam knows something is very wrong when his brother turns and flees the room, leaving Sam under the filing cabinet.

Sam wants to scream in frustration, wants to beat his fists to the floor and wail because his big brother has just left him trapped in a warehouse, but Sam is seventeen not seven and so he lays there limp for a moment before using his growing anger to wriggle out from under the cabinet and sprint downstairs. John's voice is yelling from behind a closed door and the thuds tell Sam he's trying to break it down.

"Dad, stop for a second," Sam calls and opens the door, revealing a sweaty John.

"Why aren't you with Dean? Where is he?" But there's not enough time to explain what just happened upstairs and Sam says,

"He went after it by himself." There's something more there, John knows that, but right now his oldest son is fighting a creature with three-inch fangs with no backup. The warehouse is big and it's too risky to split up so the Winchesters roam it together, finding nothing.

"Do you think it took him somewhere?" Sam panted, after another search of the basement.

"It's not their habit," John says, gazing around him like Dean is going to pop out from behind a door with his usual good-natured grin. "Where the hell is he?" he mutters. But they don't search for much longer because something that can only be described as a chilling scream echoes from above them.

"Careful," John warns Sam as the boy attempts to fly into the very room Dean left him in thirty minutes ago. "It could be a trap. You know they mimic voices." Sam nods but his body is still straining forward, being pulled by the sound of his brother in distress. Goosebumps riddle his skin when the scream comes again but now it's just around the corner. They enter the room with weapons raised but Sam's arm goes numb when he sees what's in front of him.

It was – it _is_ – Dean screaming and for good reason; he's pushed up against a wall as the Corcotta bends over him, it's face buried in Dean's torso. Sam wants to die but he moves forward with his father as John comes up behind the Corcotta, throws it from his son and impales it through the spine in one swift movement.

Dean falls forward only to be caught by Sam, who sinks to the ground with his big brother in his arms, Dean's side spilling more blood than Sam thought existed in a single human body.

"S'm?" Dean mumbles through red lips, eyes only half open but focused on Sam's face.

"Shh," Sam says and then holds tight when Dean bucks beneath him as John balls his jacket up and presses it into Dean's wound.

"Dn't leave," Dean pants once they're in the Impala, Sam cradling Dean in the backseat. He's never seen his brother this pale, this injured, and Sam wonders if Dean is going to die in his arms. Dean is going to die and Sam still doesn't know why his older brother is so upset with him.

"I'm not leaving," Sam assures him. "I'm right here." Dean's hand, the one that's painted crimson, reaches up to grab at Sam's shirt with more strength than he should have left and he tries to tell Sam something but the words don't come out and Sam has to keep gently slapping Dean's cheeks to keep him awake.

All through Dean's three-hour surgery during which they remove two feet of his intestines and then all through the night sitting at his bedside, Sam hopes and prays that when Dean wakes up, he's going to be different. That he might go back to being old Dean, the one who loves Sam. Because as horrible as it was when Dean was dying in his arms in the Impala, Sam felt like Sammy again. His brother needed him, wanted him.

But when Dean wakes up more alert on the second day, he's back to barely brushing his gaze over Sam even though Sam is the one who makes sure he eats, makes sure he has enough pain medication, helps him on those first painful trips to the bathroom.

Now here they are, fifteen days after Dean was laid out on an operating table, fifteen days after he left Sam lying on a warehouse floor, and Sam hasn't a clue about what to do.

When he flicks on the bedroom light for just a moment to search for the book he's been reading, Dean groans and rolls over again, this time flinging his arm over the empty side of the bed. Sam instinctively takes a step back, not wanting to be within arm's reach of Dean if he wakes because that never ends well, and his foot lands on something hard and cold. Resisting the urge to yelp, Sam digs the ice pack out from where it's been kicked under the bed, flipping it over in his hands a couple times before reaching for his brother. With gentle fingers, he pulls back the blanket that's over Dean's chest to examine his brother's shoulder. It's swollen to twice its normal size and it's an impressive canvas of black and purple even though the injury occurred less than four hours ago. This was the dumbest move made by far, the one where Dean had snuck off to try and deal with a revenant by himself, not waking Sam who had closed his eyes for a short nap. John was gone again, helping Pastor Jim with something, but the boys had the Impala and a small case of their own. Just a hint of a maybe revenant. A stupid revenant who kept getting spotted before he could nab any children. People thought it was a yeti or Bigfoot and Dean had guffawed at the thought.

"We got this, Dad," he says over the phone as Sam eats his way through a burger. "Don't worry about us. Okay, bye."

"We'll go tonight," Dean says as he stretches out on his bed, trying not to grimace as his surgery scar twinges.

"Okay," Sam says and he knows by now that he shouldn't try to elicit any more conversation so that's when he takes his nap. When he wakes up only an hour later, Dean is gone. No note, no Impala, no Dean. Sam is livid; he's stuck at the motel, running his fingers through the hair that he never wants to cut. He's one button away from dialing his father because it's been two and a half hours and Dean isn't back yet. Sam has a horrible thought that perhaps Dean just left him here, left him here to fend for himself. But then his big brother crashes through the open door.

"Where have you been?" Sam shouts, not worried at all about keeping his voice down. Dean glowers at him and winces when he drops his duffel to the ground. "What the hell, Dean? You just left me here!" Then Dean is easing off his shirt and Sam sees the damage of the swollen joint and he's one part concerned, the other part incredulous.

"What happened?" he asks, grabbing one of their few ice packs and handing it to his brother. "Do you need to go back to the hospital? That doesn't look good. Is it broken?"

"Stop asking questions," Dean snaps. "Go study or something." Despite Sam's pleading, his yelling, Dean never says another word and Sam storms out of the motel room and drives the Impala a couples miles down the road in order to cool off.

Who does Dean think he is? You can't just un-brother your sibling, can you? Sam gasps back tears. Does Dean not – not love him anymore? He fingers the letter of acceptance he has tucked in his jacket pocket, letting the edges of the paper soothe him. This is all crazy and Sam just wants to leave, just keep driving and driving until he hits California but he can't yet. Not until the school opens in two weeks. He just has to make it that much longer. He can do it. He's managed worse.

By the time, he walks back into the motel room, Dean's passed out and the room is dark.

The icepack is making his fingers numb and Sam makes the decision to wedge it back under his brother's shoulder. Dean's skin is hot under Sam's touch so Sam makes up a cool washcloth and puts it on Dean's forehead because that's what Dean used to do for him. Back when he cared.

He's never seen his brother so beat-up before. It's like Dean can't wait for one injury to heal before he goes out and gets himself another one. It puzzles Sam but more than that, it makes him want to roll his brother in bubble wrap and chain him to the bed so he can't leave Sam's sight. Dean fidgets under the washcloth and his eyes open.

For a moment in his half-sleep, Dean-but-not-Dean blinks up at Sam with an expression of worry, one Sam hasn't seen in forever, one that makes him want to hug Dean like he's six years old again. But then Dean-but-not-Dean blinks again and the hard mask settles over him again and he scooches away from his brother.

"Go away," he says, cringing when his shoulder bumps into the headboard.

"What's your problem?" Sam asks more forcefully then he meant to but he's tired of all this, exhausted really.

"Nothing. Go to sleep."

"Tell me."

"_Go away_." Sam can't even yell, can't muster up the energy.

"Please, Dean," and his voice cracks over his brother's name. "Just tell me." Dean's eyes are staring at the wall of Sam's shoulder.

"Just go back to reading or whatever," Dean says wearily. "So you can go to school like you want."

Sam freezes and his stomach flies up to his throat. The piece of paper still in his jacket has turned into a lead weight as Sam's heart sinks.

"What did you say?"

"Don't play stupid," Dean says flatly. "I saw the letter. Congratulations."

Everything makes sense now. The way that Dean has been ignoring him, unable to look at Sam, say his name. The way he has been unwilling to hunt with him. Strangely, Sam isn't angry because he's aware that Dean has a right to be upset. Sam's plan is to walk out on his family and Dean knows it. So all Sam can say is,

"Please don't tell Dad." There are too many beats of silence and Sam's heart starts racing so fast he wonders if a seventeen year old can have a heart attack. If his father finds out, then it will all be over. He'll lock Sam in a motel room until after the semester starts or he'll make a call to Stanford and tell them Sam's deferring. College is his only way out and if Sam has to stay in his life one more miserable minute than he absolutely has to, he won't survive. He is not his father. He is not his brother. He is only himself and this is what he wants.

"I won't." It's all but a whisper but a whisper that sends relief soaring through Sam.

"Thanks, Dean." But Dean has turned away from him, is cradling his shoulder against a pillow, the scar on his leg flashing up at the youngest Winchester like an evil smile. Sam remembers the bloody bandages in the bathroom.

And Sam wonders if the kind of scar he's given his brother is the kind that will heal. But he's still not going to stick around to find out.


End file.
